QUEZON City, Philippines (Eagle News) — The camp of Senator Leila De Lima on Monday asked the Supreme Court to set aside the warrant of arrest issued by the Muntinlupa Regional Trial Court last week.
De Lima’s lawyer Alex Padilla and chief of staff Philip Sawali filed before the High Court the 82-page petition for certiorari and prohibition, which also sought to question the “legality and propriety” of the arrest order and commitment order issued by Branch 204 Judge Juanita Guerrero against De Lima.
“Why was Judge Guerrero able to issue immediately an arrest order even if there was still a pending motion to quash that was being heard and that questioned her court’s jurisdiction?” Sawali said in a press conference prior to the filing.
He said “procedurally,” the issuance of the arrest order and the warrant is “not in accordance with the requirements of the Constitution and with the procedural rules for the proper issuance of a warrant.”
“Substantively, there is a big problem (in terms of why) Judge Guerrero came to the conclusion there was probable cause (for the issuance),” he added.
Sawali said this was because there was no “corpus delicti” or “allegation of a crime” written in the information of illegal trading filed against De Lima.
He said the elements of trading—who sold the drugs, who bought them, what drugs were sold, the number of grams bought, among others—were not present in the information.
“Based on this alone, textually, the information is defective and invalid,” he said.
Eagle News Service
